Optics: The Mystical Poet's Guide to the Science of Inner Sight

Nominated for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, Optics: The Mystical Poet’s Guide to the Science of Inner Sight is a work of great maturity. This book is a collection of lyrical and mystical poetry designed to inspire, to enlighten, and to transform the reader, intellectually and spiritually, while simultaneously entertaining the reader. This book includes an insightful essay, entitled The Melody of Poetry, which in brief, presents the author's ideas on the nature of modern poetry, and is based on his own work, as one might consider it within the context of contemporary literature. Optics is also introduced by a prefatory letter to the author, with comments on its contents, by the well-known author, the late James Baldwin.

Vincent Carver Gilliam, Ph.D. is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet, a writer and a scholar. He has been writing and reciting his poetry, ever since studying with Yvor Winters, the renowned literary critic and poet, at Stanford University in the sixties. His mystical experiences combined with his Ph.D. studies, also completed at Stanford and in Humanities and Religious Studies, give his poetry a melodious and inspirational quality. His other book is an extensive literary and philosophical study of the 16th century Spanish poet and mystic, St. John of the Cross, entitled, St. John of the Cross: The Evolution of his Mystical Language of Love, which he is currently revising for publication. Among his numerous public readings, Dr. Gilliam has recited his poetry on Radio, and at The World Symposium on Humanities at the Pasadena Convention Center. He also hosted a radio talk show on KPFA in Berkeley, CA. In recognition of his accomplishments, Dr. Gilliam is a biographee in the Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Religion, Who’s Who in Education and in the International Dictionary of Biography from Cambridge, England.